Dinosaur Bait
by FeebleFluffyFan
Summary: In the wake of S01E04, Ianto needs to know he is forgiven. Sorry for the bad title and useless summary. I'm not really a writer. I want to be a beta though, so I have to submit 5 stories or 6000 words. Rating might have to change later depending on where this goes.
1. Chapter 1

Author notes: If anybody made it passed the summary, I am impressed by your dedication to the fandom! Anyway, there is no Ianto in this chapter but I promise he will be in the next one...all supposing I get enough positive feedback to actually carry on with it. As said in the summary, I am not a writer so please don't expect much from this. But, without further ado...

Gwen ordered Chinese for lunch. None of them felt like eating pizza, not when their usual pizza delivery girl was in their morgue. They gathered in the boardroom to eat, all trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore the empty seat.

It was Owen who eventually broke the silence to address the elephant in the room. "Ianto?" he asked, raising a questioning eyebrow towards Jack. The question may not have been eloquently worded but they all knew what he was asking.

"Suspended for a month." Jack gave up on his pretence at eating and shoved his chopsticks back in the carton, sliding the meal away from him as he did so. "Afterwards he decides whether he comes back and works hard enough to try to make up for what he did or whether he takes enough retcon to take him back to before he ever knew Torchwood…or Lisa."

The only response was three slight nods of acknowledgement but the relief in the room was almost touchable.

"You didn't really think I'd have killed him, did you?" Jack asked, disbelievingly.

"You _were_ rather angry." Tosh ventured timidly.

"No, I was _mildly_ angry; I was rather _scared_." Jack corrected.

"I didn't think anything ever scared you." Gwen commented, dripping sweet and sour sauce down her chin and grabbing a napkin to clean it up.

"Not many things do now, I've seen too much." Jack leaned back in his chair and cradled his hands behind his head. "But Cybermen do; Cybermen and Daleks. They're unstoppable because you can't reason with them and they don't die that easily."

"They were stopped at Canary Wharf." Owen reminded him, wincing slightly at the memory of what he had seen when they went to retrieve equipment from the fallen Torchwood One.

"Only because there was an expert there. If the Cyberwoman had gotten loose in Cardiff, if she had succeeded in upgrading Gwen…well, he wouldn't have been there to stop it."

Gwen, ever the optimist, patted Jack's arm. "I'm sure he would have come. It can't have just been luck that had him at Canary Wharf, surely."

"No, he chases trouble…or maybe attracts it." Jack closed his eyes and let a nostalgic smile flitter across his face. It was gone as soon as it arrived. "But he wouldn't come here. He's avoiding me."

"There's no point worrying about what might have been," Tosh put in hurriedly, no doubt sensing Jack's unhappiness at the direction the conversation had taken. "We did stop her. One day we might even come to terms with that."

"You mean the fact that we shot Ianto's girlfriend?" Owen asked bluntly. At Tosh's nod, he reached over and squeezed her hand. "You do know that the thing we shot was no longer Ianto's Lisa, don't you? It was a cyber-converted brain in a pizza delivery girl's body. It was in no way Ianto's girlfriend."

"I know that." Tosh looked down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. "But I don't think Ianto does. To him, we're the people who murdered his girlfriend…and I'm not sure how to deal with that. I know I never really spoke to him, or even paid much attention to him, but I still thought of him as a friend, like I do all of you."

"Ianto's a sensible man," Gwen said, slipping an arm round Tosh's shoulders. "I'm sure he'll realise the truth once he's had time to think about it and mourn her." She gestured towards Tosh's untouched meal. "Aren't you going to eat anything?"

Tosh squirmed a little. "I didn't think when I gave you my order; I forgot that it has barbecue sauce on it." Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back hurriedly.

Gwen cleared her throat, looking slightly green and Jack looked away from the table. Owen, putting aside the snarky persona he usually showed the world, calmly switched the rest of his lemon chicken for Tosh's pork dish.

"Can't have you fainting away," he said gruffly, in response to her tremulous, grateful smile. "We're one man down as it is."

"Speaking of which," Jack braced his hands against the table, forcing his Captain persona back into the forefront. "We are going to have to sort out some kind of rota for who does what and when whilst Ianto's away. We'll all have to clear up after ourselves but all the others things he did will still need to be done."

"What exactly _does_ Ianto do?" Gwen asked sheepishly. "I mean, I know he makes the coffee and keeps everywhere tidy but he doesn't spend all his time doing that, does he?"

"He researches stuff." Tosh answered quietly. "He always seems to know everything. And he's probably the only one of us who can find anything in the archives."

"Bagsy not me to do any of that archive stuff." Owen garbled round a messy mouthful of pork, rice and barbecue sauce. "Ianto nearly killed me after the last time I went in there."

"I don't think it was you going in the archives that upset him, it was the state you left them in when you came out." Jack pointed out with a lopsided smile. "Tosh or I will do archive stuff. Tosh is better with the Tech than I am but I can find stuff better."

"Only because you probably put the stuff down there to begin with." Tosh muttered. "If you had actually used a system, I would be fine."

"I did use a system." Jack protested.

"I don't think chronological order of finding things really counts, Jack." Owen said scathingly. "Maybe we should just hope that anything we need is in the bit Ianto has already sorted."

Tosh shook her head. "No, if we're going to mess anything up, it would be better if it happened in the bit he hasn't done yet. Can you imagine his reaction if he has to redo it?" she shuddered.

"So all the times I don't see Ianto, he's down in the archives?" Gwen asked incredulously. They all nodded. "Good grief, I haven't dared go down there on my own, they are so creepy. A month away from there, with time for his hobbies, will probably do him a world of good."

"What kind of hobbies do you suppose he has?" Tosh asked. "I don't really see him being a football player or gamer."

"I don't know…" Gwen thought for a moment. "Running maybe. He's got quite a fit body."

"Sorry to burst your bubble." Owen belched as he pushed away his empty carton. "I don't think the Teaboy had the time for hobbies."

"What do you mean?" Jack leaned forward and stared piercingly at the medic.

"I, uh, did an autopsy on Li…the Cyberwoman this morning." Owen purposefully didn't look at Jack, having been given clear orders to incinerate the body directly. "She was in a right state inside. It wouldn't have mattered once that computer doctor switched on the Cybernetics but up to then, well, Ianto must have been with her every spare minute he had to have got her through."

Silence met this statement. Silence that was eventually broken by Gwen.

"So you're saying that all the free time he has now will just serve to remind him that he doesn't have anything to do in his free time now."

"Pretty much."

Jack sighed heavily, watching the worried glances flittering between the others. "I'll check in on him this evening." He assured them.

"No offence, mate, but I think you're probably the last person Ianto wants to see right now." Owen said bluntly. "I could go this afternoon, you know, as his doctor."

"He probably won't want to see a doctor either," Tosh said quietly. "I'll go. I'd like to see him, let him know he has a friend if he wants one."

"It should be me who goes," Gwen argued. "After all, isn't that what I was hired for? The people stuff?"

"Enough!" Jack planted his fist heavily on the table, making them all jump. "I appreciate that you're all concerned, and that's great, it says a lot about you as people. But I'll be the one going. Yes, I am the last person he will want to see but, frankly, he won't want to see any of you either. We all shot the Cyberwoman so we are all guilty in his eyes. At least with me, all he will be is mad. I won't make him feel guilty."

Gwen bristled. "None of us would be going to send him on a guilt trip."

"I know." Jack held up a placating hand. "But he will feel guilty anyway. You nearly got upgraded, Owen was knocked out and Tosh…well, Ianto has a soft spot for Tosh so will be feeling guilty for putting her in danger. I am the monster, he won't feel guilty over me."

The others couldn't deny the logic behind that but they still looked disturbed.

"You will be kind to him, won't you?" Tosh asked cautiously.

"That depends." Jack got up and started picking up the rubbish from their takeaway.

"On what?" That was Gwen.

"On what I find when I see him. Kindness might not be what's best for him. But don't worry; I'll make sure he's ok, even if that means provoking him into trying to kill me."


	2. Chapter 2

Author notes: I forgot to disclaim on the first chapter, naughty me. However, I doubt anyone reading this was going to be under any delusions that I own the right to any of the characters or the setting. Just in case you were, I don't! Ianto as promised. Thank you for reading. And thank you for all the lovely reviews on chapter 1. This is an action chapter and I couldn't really get it to flow but bear with me because the next chapter will be talk again, which will hopefully flow better.

* * *

Ianto watched as Owen, Gwen and Tosh crossed the Plass arm in arm, no doubt heading for the local Pub for an after-work drink before heading home for the night. Noting that Jack wasn't with them, he crossed his fingers and hoped that the boss would follow his normal routine of finding a high building to stand on for a couple of hours after everyone else had left the hub.

He was in luck; it was barely minutes before Jack drove off in the SUV. Ianto watched it out of sight and then quickly entered the tourism office. The invisible lift was more convenient to use but the CCTV cameras monitoring that area were harder to tamper with. Months spent secretly caring for Lisa had honed his skills at manipulating the cameras.

The huge cog rolled back with its usual blaring sirens and Ianto stepped into the Hub. If Jack thought that he could keep him away from this place for a month, he could think again. The Hub was his life and he couldn't live without it, not even now that Lisa was gone.

The pain rolled through him again but Ianto knew that it wasn't because Lisa was gone. It was because the slight connection he had had with his team was gone. Out of necessity, he had made himself almost unnoticeable, but they had all relied on him nonetheless; a reliance that spoke of an implicit, if unconscious, trust. None of them would trust him anymore and he had really liked being trusted. He needed to be trusted. Especially by Jack. Jack, who had been ready to shoot him. Ianto wished he had. Being dead would be preferable to this.

Ianto knew that he would never be able to cope with working with Jack if the older man didn't trust him. There would be no innuendo, no flirting, and it would be unbearable. But life was nothing without this job. This job was everything. Jack was everything.

His decision was made. This was his last trip to the Hub, his last trip anywhere. He would say goodbye to Myfanwy, even to the few resident weevils, then everything would end once and for all. How he wished he could say goodbye to the team too, but he knew that was impossible.

Ianto slipped down to the cells to check on the weevils, not bothering to avoid the cameras anymore. So what if the team found out tomorrow that he'd been in? By then it would be too late for them to do anything about it. You can't discipline a dead man.

* * *

Jack stepped wearily back onto the perception filter paving slab and used his wrist strap to set the lift in motion. Ianto wasn't home, nor was he at any of his normal haunts; not that Ianto seemed to have many haunts. As Owen had predicted, the young Welshman seemed to spend most of his waking hours at the hub. Jack didn't often worry about his team outside of the workplace but he was worried now.

As he descended into the Hub, the smell of Myfanwy's barbecue sauce rose to meet him. He'd have to get out the industrial strength lily air freshener that Gwen had brought in. The smell of the sauce only served to remind the entire team of what had happened with Lisa and none of them could cope with it. If it were not for the fact that Myfanwy wouldn't eat if they didn't use it, it would have been chucked with the rubbish.

The thought that the smell was far too strong to be leftover scent from Myfanwy's last meal was just begin to curl around the edges of Jack's realisation when he saw the lone figure standing exactly where the Cyberwoman (he refused to think of her as Lisa) had been when he had covered her with the sticky sauce. Hearing Myfanwy squawk out her hunting scream, Jack looked up to see her dive bombing from the top of the Hub.

The horrific realisation that the lone figure was Ianto, covered in barbecue sauce, had Jack jumping off the slab before it reached the bottom. He barely registered the pain as the landing jarred every bone in his body.

"Ianto! No!" He was running as soon as his feet touched the ground, reaching out, knowing he wouldn't get there in time.

The pteranodon swooped then swung clear, heading back to the top of the Hub, giving Jack time to tackle Ianto. The younger man was surprisingly strong and Jack had barely moved him before Myfanwy was back for another pass. Again she swerved off at the last moment, soaring back to the top of the Hub.

"Ianto, stop fighting me." Jack huffed, wishing he had a bit more of a height advantage to utilise as he half wrestled Ianto back. As Myfanwy came back for a third time, Jack tore Ianto's jacket off and launched it towards the pteranodon, who diverted to attack the clothing. With strength born of desperation, Jack heaved Ianto into a fireman's lift and sprinted, as much as was possible under the additional weight, to his personal quarters.

Getting down the ladder to his bunker with six foot of toned and resistant man over his shoulder was not the easiest task Jack had ever attempted but he emerged from the battle triumphant and expertly manoeuvred them both into the small ensuite.

"In you go." He stepped into the shower and turned the hot water on, placing Ianto back on his feet.

The hot water seemed to have a sobering effect on Ianto and he stopped fighting back. He stood still, rigid, his eyes strangely vacant. Despite the steaming temperature of the water, the young man started to shiver violently.

Jack had often imagined sharing a shower with his handsome, young employee but never in all his dreams had they both been fully dressed. Nor had Ianto been quite so passive, he mused as he grabbed the shampoo and started to wash the sticky sauce from Ianto's hair.

"Sorry, Ianto, I don't think this suit will ever be the same again." It occurred to Jack that, if he were not quite so worried about Ianto, he would probably be extremely amused that the younger man was wearing a suit on his day off. "Coming to think of it, neither will my clothes. I'll have you know this was my favourite shirt."

He paused for a minute to allow Ianto the opportunity for a sarcastic comment, since most of his shirts were exactly the same. When none was forthcoming, he sighed and pulled Ianto close, gently urging the young man's head onto his own shoulder.

"Oh Ianto, what am I going to do with you?"


	3. Chapter 3

Author notes: I do not own Torchwood or the characters contained therein. Thank you to everyone who is still reading this. I am overwhelmed. This was where my original idea ran out but I have a few ideas of different takes on other episodes so maybe I'll keep going till I get to 6000 words at least. I don't have anything together yet though so updates will likely be a lot slower. I apologise now for the ending of this chapter, it is flat but I couldn't think how to fix it.

* * *

Jack wasn't expecting a reply, having so far had no verbal response, so he was somewhat surprised by the hoarse whisper spoken into his neck.

"To be fair, Sir, if you'd left me where I was, you wouldn't have to do anything with me." The lack of emotion was chilling to say the least but Jack took the words as a positive sign nonetheless.

"Apart from mop you off the floor, you mean?" The words could have been accusatory but Jack managed to keep them simply mildly curious, as if they were discussing the weather.

"You could have got that nice old woman from the cleaners round the corner to do that for you. I don't think she particularly enjoys the messes we give her to clean up but she does enjoy the spa day she thinks she's had." Ianto replied, almost conversationally.

Jack shuffled them both back so that they were properly under the spray again, gently tipping Ianto's head back to rinse off the shampoo, suddenly having the bizarre thought that it was fortunate that he had bought scented shampoo this time.

"You thought it through pretty thoroughly, huh?" Jack kept his voice light even as his heart broke at the thought.

"Not really." Still no emotion, just profound weariness. "If I'd thought it through properly, I'd have left you instructions. You never were very good at back stories, Sir."

Jack shut off the water and reached for the towel that was hanging from the towel rack. It wasn't a clean one but he wasn't of a mind to leave Ianto long enough to find one.

"I'm not sure if I should find your willingness to camouflage your own death impressive or disturbing." Okay, that was a lie. Jack was disturbed. Very disturbed. "Can you take your own clothes off, or do I need to do it for you?"

"I don't think that's necessary, Sir."

Jack almost smiled at the discomfort in Ianto's voice. Almost. "Either you do it or I do, I didn't save you from the leather chicken just to have you die from pneumonia."

Ianto's fingers started fumbling with his buttons. "Why did you save me?" He didn't sound overly interested in the answer but at least he was talking.

"You're part of my team." As soon as Ianto's shirt was off, Jack wrapped the towel firmly round his shoulder, rubbing briskly to both dry and create some heat.

"You were holding a gun to my head yesterday."

"I know I was. I also know that I asked you to do something that you would never be able to do. Hating me was the only thing that kept you fighting hard enough to stay alive. Where are you going?"

Ianto had left the tiny bathroom and was heading to the ladder leading to Jack's office. "I'm not taking my trousers off in front of you, Sir. I'm going home to get dry and to change."

Jack caught Ianto's arm and turned him towards the bed. "Do you really think I'm letting you go home after what you tried to pull tonight? If it bothers you that much, I'll go up there whilst you get some of my clothes on. They'll be a bit broad on you but we're a similar height so they should fit well enough for tonight." He busied himself finding a set of his most casual clothes and some boxers so that he didn't have to look at Ianto.

"You don't understand, Sir. I can't stay here, not with you." At last, the emotion broke into Ianto's voice, the words coming out almost as a howl of distress.

Jack sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Ianto, I know that I made myself into a monster yesterday and that I'm the last person you want to see right now but I had no choice." He put the clothes he had picked on the bed. "There was just enough of Lisa left to give you the smallest chance, but that little bit was fading fast under the cyber control. If you hadn't been driven by hate and desperation, you wouldn't have got out alive and neither would the rest of Cardiff."

"So it was all playacting was it?" Jack winced at the disbelief in Ianto's voice.

"No, I won't insult your intelligence by claiming that." He clapped his hand on Ianto's bare shoulder. "It was a very little bit of playacting fuelled by a lot of fear."

"You don't do fear." Ianto negated in a flat voice. "You're an adrenaline junkie just like the rest of them."

"Believe me Ianto, I do fear. Those creatures terrify the life out of me. You were at One; you know about The Doctor. He only just stopped them, and he lost a large part of himself doing it. What chance did the rest of us have? And I nearly had to make the same sacrifice he did." Jack held his breath as he willed Ianto to understand.

Ianto looked up with an expression of confusion, meeting Jack's eyes for the first time that night. "What do you mean?"

Jack laid his hand against Ianto's cold cheek, keeping him looking up. "The Doctor lost his companion, Rose Tyler, at Canary Wharf; I nearly lost you."

Ianto raised his own hand to cover his eyes and shrugged his face away from Jack's hand, dropping his head in the process. Jack could hear broken sobs coming from the younger man and could see his shoulders shaking.

He sat down on the bed and urged Ianto down beside him. "Come on, get some dry clothes on and get some sleep. I know it's not what you want to hear right now, but time will make things better." Jack pulled his t-shirt over Ianto's head, and manipulated his arms down the sleeves. "Things might not be the same without Lisa, but they can be good again, in a different way."

Ianto turned his head so fast that Jack almost felt the whiplash himself. "Do you think that's what this is about?"

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Well, isn't it?"

"Of course not." Ianto got as close to yelling as Ianto probably ever got. "Don't you think I know that the chance of things being the same with Lisa died at Canary Wharf? Don't you think I didn't know that from the moment I pulled her from that conversion unit?"

"Frankly, no, I didn't think you knew that." Jack replied honestly. "You didn't seem to possess an equal degree of clarity yesterday."

"I knew it yesterday. I can't claim that you took Lisa away from me when you all fired your guns. What you took away from me was hope."

"I'm sorry, Ianto. Hope is a terrible thing to take away from a man."

"That's not what this is about either."

If Jack's eyebrows got any higher, they'd be part of his hairline. "That's slightly worrying Ianto; both of those are pretty good reasons for wanting to end things. How many reasons can one man have?"

Ianto shook his head.

"I think I deserve an answer, Ianto. Don't you?"

"Do you know what has kept me going since Canary Wharf, Sir?" Ianto sank his head back into his head.

"Apart from desperation and hope?" Jack asked, trying to get the conversation back onto slightly lighter ground.

"You." The single word reply fell between them like an undetonated bomb.

"Okay…" Jack breathed out slowly. "But I'm still here. Nothing's changed there. Why were you trying to, you know…"

"Nothing's changed?" Ianto laughed but there was no mirth in it. "Nothing's changed? Everything's changed! You'll never be able to trust me again. You'll always look at me differently. All of you will. You'll always be wondering what else I'm hiding."

"You're right." Jack lifted Ianto's face, so he could see what the other man was thinking. "Things will be different. But different doesn't have to be bad. If you promise me that you will show us the real Ianto, I will promise you that things will be better."

"Why would you believe me?"

"Well, for one thing, I simply can't believe you have anything else to hide; no man can have more than one secret like that." Jack smiled, the quirk of muscles that only lifted one side of his mouth. "And, secondly, I understand the reasons for what you did. All of us do. There isn't a single one of us who wouldn't go to any length for love. We've forgiven you, you just need to learn to forgive yourself."

"I'm not sure I can."

"Sure you can, and you can start by changing your trousers." Jack patted Ianto's leg, pleased that the storm was over. "Then come upstairs. You owe my pet an apology."

" _Your_ pet?" Ianto asked incredulously, pulling his trousers and boxers down without seeming to notice that he was doing what he was told, or that Jack was still in the room. "Myfanwy is _my_ pet."

"She lives in my house." Jack countered, smiling fully, not really invested in the argument but more than invested in seeing the life return to his young employee. The view didn't really hurt either.

"I found her, I named her, I feed her and clean up after her. She's mine." Ianto pulled on the rest of the clothes Jack had chosen for him.

Jack found the sight of Ianto in his clothes strangely appealing but knew that now was not the time for leers or innuendoes. "All the more reason for you to apologise. I guess you confused her, what with the sauce telling her to eat you but her own feelings telling her not to. What possessed you to choose that particular method anyway?"

Ianto shrugged. "It seemed like poetic justice. Going out the same way as Lisa. Well, as close as. I couldn't get up the courage to ask you to get the team to put together another firing squad."

"Shame." Jack ruffled his hair. "We could have gotten here without the mess. You do know that the team wouldn't have shot you, don't you? They are all a lot more understanding of you than you are."

"I don't seem to be very successful at anything, do I?" Ianto sighed. "Couldn't even die properly."

Jack grimaced. "You have no idea just how ironic it is that you said that to me of all people.


End file.
